has Grateful Dead stickers on the bumper of his truck, lollipop tattoos on his triceps. The mothers all giggle as their kids waver between Bomb Pops and Fun-Dips, whispering jokes about his dipstick, because they’ve heard Rod the Bod makes house calls. It’s true, he says, ducking all six feet, four inches to hand a kid a Drumstick, but only if you can say the alphabet backwards. So they practice in their beds at night, beside their dreary husbands, putting in reverse everything they know about letters and the way things are, dreaming instead of the way things could be.